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Published on Wednesday, May 9, 2001 in the Guardian of London
Chernobyl Raised Mutations 600%
by Paul Brown
Children of the "liquidators" - those drafted in to clear up the Chernobyl disaster - suffer seven times the mutation rate of offspring whose parents were not exposed to radiation, research published today by the Royal Society shows.
The "unexpectedly high" mutation rate, discovered by using DNA fingerprinting techniques, means that a significant proportion of the world's population doing jobs where even low-level radiation is present are exposing their unborn children to increased risk, the researchers say.
This will be of serious concern to the nuclear industry, which has repeatedly rejected claims that exposure to radiation among its workers can affect children yet to be conceived. The theory was put forward by a team at Southampton University as the reason for the leukemia cluster at Sellafield, but later rejected.
The new findings show that the radiation from the stricken Ukrainian reactor affected the sperm of fathers, leading to mutation in the DNA of the children. None of them showed physical deformities, because the DNA changes were slight, but the long-term effects are not known.
Three teams of scientists, from the Institute of Evolution and the Kupat Holim National Cancer Control Center, both in Haifa, Israel, and the Research Center for Radiation Medicine in Ukraine tested children of parents involved in the Chernobyl accident.
Families in which one child was conceived before the accident and one later were tested, along with control groups from areas with no radiation exposure. The increases in mutation rates as a result of the parents being exposed to ionizing radiation was "highly significant", the paper says.
Dr. Chesser, a geneticist at the University of Georgia, and Dr. Robert Baker, from Texas Tech University, periodically venture into the most radioactive areas they can find inside the six-mile "exclusion zone" in Ukraine around the reactor that melted down in 1986. Wearing no special protective gear other than shoe covers, and sometimes respirators, they go in quest of the mouse-like rodents known as voles.
The mystery that keeps luring the two back is that voles and other rodents are thriving in the zone, an environment so contaminated that the animals themselves become radioactive. The research team considers them safe enough to handle, but Dr. Chesser said, "You wouldn't want to keep one of those voles in your pocket for any length of time."
Despite their hardy appearance, the voles sustain extraordinary amounts of genetic damage, Dr. Chesser and Dr. Baker reported last month in the journal Nature. "The mutation rate in these animals is hundreds and probably thousands of times greater than normal," Dr. Baker said.
The Chernobyl accident has, in essence, compressed several thousand years of evolution into a decade, according to Dr. David Hillis, a molecular biologist at the University of Texas who wrote an editorial accompanying the Nature paper.
Originally posted by Redneck from Hell
Most of you are so uneducated. You read some article, watch a documentary, and talk here as if you know something about it. Do what I do and tread carefully before you spread fear, about a complex subject you know nothing about.
Let me make this very clear to those of you who have adopted the ignorant cap. You cannot simply bury the plant in the state it's in. They would have if they could. Bring up pride into this is relative to the ignorance you try to mask.
Do some research, and you'll find that it will be pretty uneffective to bury the plant now. All you'll have is a trouble that is now buried.
Further more, by reading these replies it is clear that ATS is full of people without much of a life really. Only this kind of people would actually bother to type one lined responsed, the likes of " oh my god it's happening" or "oh my god this can't be good". I thought every post was to count for something. At least articulate why you think that is, and provide some explanation.
Those who have no lifes, will cheer on to see doom happen, it's obvious. Most posts in this thread have contributed NOTHING to anything.edit on 27-3-2011 by Redneck from Hell because: (no reason given)
Workers at a tsunami-damaged nuclear plant were forced to evacuate after radiation levels 10 million times above the normal rate were reported in a reactor unit Sunday, but the reading was an error, officials say. Officials quickly adjusted the threat warnings on Sunday, saying the reported measurements were a mistake and that water did not test 10 million times than usual.
You can bet your last dollar it was 10 million.
Leaking water at reactor 2 has been measured at 1,000 millisieverts/hour - 10 million times higher than when the plant is operating normally. "We are examining the cause of this, but no work is being done there because of the high level of radiation," said a spokesman for the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco).
Originally posted by JRCrowley
Originally posted by Redneck from Hell
Most of you are so uneducated. You read some article, watch a documentary, and talk here as if you know something about it. Do what I do and tread carefully before you spread fear, about a complex subject you know nothing about.
Let me make this very clear to those of you who have adopted the ignorant cap. You cannot simply bury the plant in the state it's in. They would have if they could. Bring up pride into this is relative to the ignorance you try to mask.
Do some research, and you'll find that it will be pretty uneffective to bury the plant now. All you'll have is a trouble that is now buried.
Further more, by reading these replies it is clear that ATS is full of people without much of a life really. Only this kind of people would actually bother to type one lined responsed, the likes of " oh my god it's happening" or "oh my god this can't be good". I thought every post was to count for something. At least articulate why you think that is, and provide some explanation.
Those who have no lifes, will cheer on to see doom happen, it's obvious. Most posts in this thread have contributed NOTHING to anything.edit on 27-3-2011 by Redneck from Hell because: (no reason given)
So what you're saying is, you know more about this issue than Michio Kaku, one of the world's most reputed physicists, and a man who holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics and a joint appointment at City College of New York, and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he has lectured for more than 30 years?
It is clearly you who has not done his research. Unless you have more education than Michio Kaku?
Nice try, redneck, but I don't think so. FAIL.
"BURY IT!" Michio Kaku On Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant
www.youtube.com...
Originally posted by fleabit
The area around Chernobyl flourishing? I never heard anyone say something so ludicrous. What makes you say that? there are still children being born with 2 heads, same goes for animal life and plant life. The whole area is completely distorted. I've done a lot of research on that years ago. Also our media gave quit some attention to it.
What is happening is Japan is very serious. Not to be dismissed.
They have had more than one special in the last couple of years, filming the area around Chernobyl. Nature is reclaiming the area. Here is but one of many videos you can view:
There are all sorts of larger animals now, plants, trees reclaiming the streets.. it is recovering. And it certainly isn't taking thousands or millions of years. And it was much worse than this disaster probably ever has a chance of being.
I'm not saying it's a good situation. Any damage to the environment is too much. But it's not gloom and doom, the world is going to die because of it... as many in this thread would have you believe.
Well I will take that bet because it was not 10 million it was 1,000 millisieverts which was up to 10 million times the normal level for reactor cooling systems.
Please note how the number 10 million was used to frighten people. It is in the very first sentence.
1,000 millisieverts is the max allowable according to international worker safety standards.
A little perspective on what we are dealing with:
Originally posted by Seekeye2
Now they tell us they made a mistake in the reading - yea right!
What they really mean is that they had a Media Leak and they need to tighten the ranks even more.
We will get to know the worst of all this when they are ready (which means they've decided how the finances are going to be played) and not before.
Follow your own nose!